


kiss, kiss, it's the body electric baby

by Ladyboo



Series: for the sea no longer torments me [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Electrocution, F/M, Horror, Hunt Gone Wrong, Hurt Sam Winchester, M/M, Other, Seizures, Torture, Trans Character, Urination, Weecest, established wincest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-05-23 04:48:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14927426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladyboo/pseuds/Ladyboo
Summary: A song in her head, soft and delicate piano, Clair de Lune and she knew it from the nights she couldn’t sleep and Dean tapped the rhythm of it out against her hip, her spine. Quiet and off center, she could hear it in her head now and it-the sound skipped. It caught on a note like a low, hazy electric squeal for all that it was muffled. Muffled and crackling, antiqued phonograph unkempt and it hissed, it popped, a sizzling kind of sound and it-





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Trying a new genre, have some Sam having a bad time!

She hated hunting. 

An obvious sentiment, one that had settled in her shoulders and in her hands, it stained her work and guided her feet. It left dripping contempt on everything she touched, little handprint marks of her discontent everywhere she went, a miasma sticky cloud of it every time she breathed. It pulled at her heart, pulled her somewhere that wasn’t here, out the car window, off the porch of the rental, she could walk, she could walk, she could walk. 

John wouldn’t miss her, she knew he wouldn’t. 

He got that look in his eyes sometimes, something close to mourning, something close to regret and his voice would get thick, and his words would turn hard. Her hair turned blond hued in the morning light and he would give pause when he spoke to her, her laughter seemed to make him have to try and catch his breath and she wondered where she had gone so wrong, by being or by still breathing. He would drink sometimes then, or he would leave other times, but he would never look her in the eye, he didn’t seem to know how, he didn’t seem to want to. Harder training then, more running then, harsh words then, Sam could never seem to catch her feet with him. 

He hated her, regardless of what Dean said, he couldn’t stand the sight of her and the both of them knew it. 

She could feel it every time he called her Samuel and knew he could see her skin crawl. 

Sometimes she didn’t know if it would be better to just leave during the night, or if it would be better to just  _ stop _ all together. They would find her if she left, she had thought about it once, Flagstaff had sounded wild and new, had been appealing less than a week ago, but she had just as quickly thought about the rope they kept in the the trunk, about the armories worth of firearms they took with them everywhere they went. It would be easy to slip away and do her best to never be found, but it would be easier still to just stop being altogether, they couldn’t find her when the only thing to find was a body gone cold. 

And then Dean smiled at her, freckled cheeks and muddled mint eyes and her heart broke at her own selfishness, for how dare she?

She was too young to feel like this, she  _ knew _ that, sixteen to the day and yet her bones ached, and yet her heart hurt and yet she didn’t know if she wanted to end it herself or get sloppy on a hunt. But then Dean smiled, but then Dean said her name, but then Dean brushed her hair back and held her hand and she wanted to cry even as she clung to him. Even as she leaned into him and smiled and pressed up onto her toes for a kiss behind John’s back, Dean called her Sammy and made her feel loved, Dean called her baby and made her feel special and she didn’t ever want to let him go. 

People like her weren’t any good though, people like her were poison, and she didn’t want to kill Dean like she’d killed their mother.

People like her didn’t get laughter and smiles and love, those things were reserved for the normal people. 

Something cracked behind her and she ducked low, she pressed her back to the half rotted wall and twisted her head to peer around the corner, to try and find the source. Nothing there though, nothing behind her just like there had  _ been _ nothing behind her for nearly an hour, as alone as she had ever been in an old hospital that she couldn’t seem to find the exit in. The air was cool, dusty and stale like she had been the only thing to disturb it in years and the darkness pressed on her skin, the chill of it sank into her bones. 

Dark and heavy, there were no windows in this ward, she couldn’t  _ see _ . 

She couldn’t hear Dean screaming anymore, couldn’t hear guttural punches of her name from behind the suddenly locked door she’d been dragged away from, from up the steep curl of stairs she’d been yanked down by a frostbite hand about her throat. She wasn’t even necessarily sure she was in the same part of the hospital now, she didn’t recognize what parts of the walls she could see, she didn’t recognize the room numbers or the empty shell of what had probably once been a nurses station. 

She couldn’t hear anything now, not really, not past the tremble of her own breathing, not past the  _ ba-bump ba-bump ba-bump _ that echoed so hard in her ears she could feel it on her skin. Her heart raced with the dim flurry of a survivalists panic, she needed to keep moving, she needed to keep her guard up. She could still feel that hand around her throat, icy breath on the back of her neck, she couldn’t get caught like that again, she couldn’t. 

Dragging her down the stairs, pulling, pulling, pulling, her repetitious screaming of no, no, no had fallen on deafened ghostly ears and the flickering existence of the orderly had just pulled her harder, had  _ squeezed _ . 

The floor had been hard when she had come to, but the room hadn’t been the same, barred windows too high for her to reach and paper peeling loose from the walls. Slow, careful, she had pushed herself up and felt her head spin, felt her throat throb with a strangulation kind of crush and her eyes ache and burn. Her gun had been gone, she’d probably lost it in the stairwell, she’d lost it  _ somewhere  _ but Sam didn’t have time for things she didn’t have.

She had her knives though, sturdy silver bowie’s with deep, hollowed fuller bands, blood grooves for tearing flesh further, for pulling blood with the sleek cut. They were familiar in her hands, her favorites, long enough in blade and thick enough in handle that they made her hands look dainty, made her look delicate, small. They were sharp though, she kept them with an extra bite for the sake of her own heart, for the sake of Dean’s, for moments like this. 

No knife would help her now though, not with that chill on her spine, not with that clench of her insides.   
Sam didn't want to die here, not like this.

Body pressed against the half crumbled wall, the shift of her weight necessary to see around the cabinet wall made no sound, but it showed nothing, no gossamer thin body, no specter for her to try and hide from. It was with bent knees then that she bounced a bit, that she pushed herself up into a stand. Nothing around her though, not a single soul to be found and she rocked a bit in place, stared down the darkened room around her with a slow rotation. 

But the world was quiet, the room empty, the ward empty and she didn’t know these rooms, she didn’t know these halls. John hadn’t given her time to memorize the maps, John hadn’t even given her time to find any maps, had told them where to meet him and had hung up the phone, had made them scramble to keep up when they had only just gotten into town. She had no idea where they were apart from a name, but names like Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum but a sour taste in her mouth and she had grown too cynical to be hopeful. 

A low sound, a curl of it, a wisp of it that came from behind her and Sam whirled around but there was nothing there, her hands tightened around the rot iron bar she’d yanked from the window of the room she’d woken up in but there was nothing to hit. She couldn’t fight something she couldn’t see, she couldn’t defend herself from something she couldn’t find. They’d done so good at keeping together, they’d worked in tandem on the jobs John sent them to take care of, back to back and arm in arm, she was fine with Dean at her six. 

But now she had her own shadow to guard her, what part of it she could pretend to find in the dark room where there was  _ nothing _ to see. She could just barely see the outline of chairs, of furniture left where it stood and forgotten, a few wheelchairs in the hall. There were tables there, there were windows that let in thin, dim new moon lighting that did next to nothing to help her. Sam tightened her grip on the bar and went the opposite direction from where she had come, a silent trek across the wide room. 

Nothing but the darkness followed her, nothing she could see, but there was something  _ there _ , she could feel it on her skin, hair raised and her muscles coiled tight. 

And there were  _ voices _ , just quiet enough, just distant enough, she couldn’t catch the words they said for all that she could hear them. Panic in their tones though, something haunting and distant, muffled terror dripping and she shivered. A phantom breath on the back of her neck and Sam whirled, bar raised and fear in her throat but she was alone. Alone with her paranoia and her skin crawling uncertainty, with her trembling stomach and her survival fluid spine, she was going to die here. 

_ She was going to die here _ .

An acid burn of tears, bitter and heavy, hot in the back of her throat and she shook her head. She didn’t have time to feel like that, she didn’t have time to think like that, she didn’t have  _ time _ . Dean was out there somewhere, Dean would find her, but she needed to find the spirit that had taken her before it found him. Quiet footfalls for all that she wanted to cry, silent breathing for all that she wanted to run and call out his name, that sort of behaviour would get her found if she hadn’t been found already. 

She was fine, she had trained for this, she was  _ fine _ . 

Better her than Dean, it was better her than Dean.

Bent knees and a steady grip, ready to swing, ready to run, she crept into the hall, kept close enough to the wall to have something to kick off of should she need to. The metal was warm in her hands, given heat where it had leached it from her palms and Sam wriggled her fingers against it, gripped it a little tighter, a little better. There was dim light at the end of that hall though, there was a chance there, windows that looked like the bars had fallen off, a way out even if it was only so she could catch her breath before diving back in. 

A song in her head, soft and delicate piano, Clair de Lune and she knew it from the nights she couldn’t sleep and Dean tapped the rhythm of it out against her hip, her spine. Quiet and off center, she could hear it in her head now and it-the sound skipped. It caught on a note like a low, hazy electric squeal for all that it was muffled. Muffled and crackling, antiqued phonograph unkempt and it hissed, it popped, a sizzling kind of sound and it-

The door in front of her swung open, slow and silent, she only noticed because of how her eyes had adjusted. She could see the languid swing of it, the lazy way it moved like it had been pushed and she froze. She could see her breath now for all that she couldn’t see anybody else, she could see her breath now. A faint puff, frosted air curling from her lips and her body tensed, she tightened her grip on the rot iron bar, those were footsteps. Practical shoes, no heel, tap tap tap as the door came open, as the air went cold and the world went sharp edged and still.

Center of the hall and there was nowhere to run, shadows did her no good when the spirit had been here longer than her, Sam didn't know this environment, she was going to cry.

“Why aren’t you in your room?”

She was going to scream.

A flicker beat figure, taller than her with strong shoulders and long legs, her dress shifted around her knees with every step. Tap, tap, tap and her fingers were bloodied, a burning smell filled the air where Sam had only expected to be cold and Debussy played on like a broken, hissing record. Burning meat, burning  _ hair _ and skin that had blackened in places, had peeled up in curling strips at the burnt edges where it had split open wide in others. She held her breath, kept from gagging just barely and tightened her grip on the iron bar, stood her ground when she should have run, should have run, should have run. 

“I’m not a patient.”

She shouldn’t have  _ said _ anything.

A static kind of disconnect and the woman faced her then, a few dozen feet between them and there was something wrong with her bones, her arms weren’t the same length, one shoulder looser than the other. There was something wrong with her  _ face _ , where were her eyes, where were her lips, teeth where there should have been skin and blood, blood blackened and dry down her empty eye sockets, down the front of her where it had spilled down what remained of her mouth and from her nose. A violent half motion, a split second seize like her body contorted in on itself for one panicked beat of Sam’s heart and the orderly stared at her, eyeless. 

Flagstaff sounded perfect right about now.

Sunlight sound perfect,  _ Dean _ sounded perfect, the woman was all exposed teeth and heartbeat stuccato seizures one moment and an eerie, misshapen too still the next. 

“What was that?”

Something reed like, something radio static crackle and bad reception faded in the distortion of her voice, a hiss to it that matched the fizzling, sizzling break of the music. It crawled across her spine and grated on her bones with the sharp of ragged claws but Sam stood her ground. Coiled so tight her body ached, she was going to shake out of her skin, she was going to vomit, where was Dean, where was her Dad?

A name there, embroidered on that uniform dress and the parts of it that had survived, splayed across what could have been the woman’s left breast. Meredith, just legible enough past the way that the ample fat around the woman’s chest had gotten so hot it had melted, had dripped boiling and slick. Eyeless and still, Meredith watched her with nary a twitch, without even the slightest motion of breathing that would have made Sam just a bit less afraid. 

The music carried on, catching, caught on a loop note that was going to be seared into her brain by the time she made it out of this.

“I’m not a patient.”

Her voice was steady and strong for all that she screamed inside, for all that a base, primal, lizard quick voice in the back of her mind chanted run, run, run. It should have carried slightly in the dark, should have given a faint echo at least against the empty all around them. Instead it was like the words caught just past her lips, like they stagnated and stumbled just past the frosted puff of her breath. 

Still, a still to the air and a still to the spirit in front of her and Sam shifted her weight, infinitely slow and as quiet as she could manage.

The music screamed to a stop. 

Another heartbeat pulsing, seizure shake motion and Meredith flickered out of view. She didn’t have long enough to try to move, to brace herself, the distance that had stood between them gone now, close enough that she would have felt the other woman’s breath if Meredith still had any. Instead she had nothing but a lungful of the bitter sharp smell of vomit, of blood and feces and sickly sweet of overcooked meat and Sam gagged then, stomach heaving. 

Too close, Meredith was too close and her voice was electric static rough and shrill.

_ “Don’t lie to me!” _

Livewire sharp against her skin and the inside of her skull seemed to crawl with it, her bones grate with it. Twisted lungs and she screamed on a rage-feral bellow, swung the rot iron with all her strength and slammed it through Meredith’s body, dispelled her even for a minute. And Sam took off then, spun on her heel in a hard dash for where she had come, past what was left of the nurses station and into the dark hall. 

The door beside her burst open and she screamed, threw herself across the expanse of the hall to try and avoid it, fearful eyes and a hurricane pound for a heart but there was nothing but darkness inside. Just the same did the one she had pressed against swing open, all of the doors in the hall rattling in their frames as they started to swing and slam. Static crackling from the room behind her and she ran again, did her best not to trip, not to fall, there were lights bobbing in front of her but she couldn’t hear anything over the thunderous slamming of dozens of doors. 

A grave bone cold touch to her forearm and Sam screamed even as she was yanked around, what remained of Meredith’s eyeless face forced into view. Exposed teeth and bleeding pits for eyes and her touch burned like snow on raw skin, she pulled at Sam until they were nearly chest to chest and the youngest Winchester felt her eyes water even as adrenaline made her steady, made her heart throb, made her  _ angry _ .

_ “You know what happens to liars!” _

_ “Fuck you!” _

Her voice broke on a scream and Sam swung one handed, survivalists fury in her motions. Icy touch gone, Meredith gone, she had swung too hard and lost her grip on the rot iron, the rod clattered to the floor somewhere in the dark. She didn’t have time for that, she didn’t have time to stop, she could barely hear the crescendo of her own heart over the way the doors hadn’t stopped and lights flickered in violent pulses from inside the rooms, casting human shadows from flickering human forms to the floor from just past the doorways. 

Someone was screaming, she could hear that much even if she couldn’t hear what they said but there were bodies in those rooms. What remained of the patients that had been here were still stuck in those rooms and she could see then, veil pale faces and reaching fingers, flinching motions even as they screamed, even as they threw themselves into the walls, the barred windows. Some spilled into the hall and she cried out, breath on the top of her head and one loomed over her and she scrambled back, threw herself then from the hall to the sign on the wall that said stairs and wrenched the door open. 

She could get away if she went up, she could get out if she went up, roof access had to be somewhere. 

Up meant fresh air, up meant an open sky and a chance to breathe, a chance to get away even if she couldn’t necessarily get out immediately. She needed to find Dean, she had to find Dean, but maybe, just maybe, if she got up then she could be safe. Sam took the stairs two at a time, as quick as her still short legs would allow and the door rattled shut behind her, heavy weight and old hinges. 

Frigid air in the stairwell, ice within her lungs, that was her breath she could see as she neared the landing, that was Debussy whining through the air in static distorted tones, that was-

That was Meredith, slick fat dripping from her skin and blood and bile down the front of her. Those were empty sockets for eyes as blood spilled down her cheeks and a lipless mouth made of nothing more than exposed, snarling teeth. A vile smell and an electric current through the air, a livewire against her bones and the ghostly woman was a terror, a horror and Sam screamed, Sam tipped backwards. She managed to catch herself at the right moment and whirl around to bolt down the stairs, to throw herself back at the door. 

And that was  _ Dean _ , pale faced and wide eyed, she could see him, she could hear him, his face and his shoulders through the glass of the door as he pounded at it. 

“Sam!”

“Dean, Dean, I can’t get it-Dean it’s locked, Dean, the-she locked, the door, Dean!”

Her back was cold, Michigan dead winter frozen and lightning storm electric tension crackle, Meredith was right behind her. She could smell her, she could feel her, she could see the eyeless violence of her reflected in the rage glaze of Dean’s green eyes. Sam clawed at the door, pulled at the handle and sobbed even as she gagged, even as she felt that old grave chill across the back of her neck. 

_ “Dean!” _

“No visitors!”

He was screaming, screaming, screaming, screaming, but Sam couldn’t cry any harder. She couldn’t breathe, that hand around her already bruised throat once more, frostbite burning fingers squeezing tight. The door rattled but she couldn’t feel it for all that her hands clutched at the handle, nerves alight only at the knowledge that the spirit had her by the throat, that she was trapped. 

“Get your fucking hands off o-Sammy!  _ Sam!” _

A hard pull, hard enough she choked, hard enough her head snapped back, her shoulder cracked and popped from its socket where she had tried to keep a hold on the door. Pain then, desert sun bright and consuming, from the frozen chill in her throat to the dislocated fire lick of it in her shoulder and her limp arm. A screeching, sobbing sound, but she had no hold on anything now and the choking grip on her throat forced her backwards down the stairs so quickly that her legs couldn’t keep up. She stumbled, she fell, she couldn’t catch her footing and with the tight hold Meredith had, she couldn’t breathe. 

_ “Sam!” _ _ _

Her vision swam, vision blinking out until she knew the stairwell, an arched stone ceiling and then a room she hadn’t seen before. 

Her legs hurt, dulled only by the searing pain in her shoulder, by the thick, meaty taste of it between her teeth. Bitter, burning, she could scarcely breathe for the abuse to her throat and the way her trachea had been constricted and nearly crushed. No longer was she dragged down the stairs though, no longer did her feet twist and kick and try to find purchase on the crumbling floor of a hall. Instead, there were static flicker lights in the room, there were bursts of brightness that cast looming, haunting shadows across everything.    
Her wrists had been bound to a chair with thick leather straps, her ankles had received the same treatment, and Sam’s head tried to roll. Another band there, a thick strap of it across her forehead where it ruffled her short hair and and cut into her skin. Laid back nearly flat, she wanted to vomit, wanted to gag, as Meredith loomed over her, eyeless and bleeding, dripping boiled fat and the spirit stuffed something in her mouth between her teeth. It clipped behind her head, two tight pulls of leather across her cheeks and Sam couldn’t catch her breath to scream against it for all that she tried. 

She couldn’t scream, she couldn’t move, she couldn’t hear Dean anymore. 

She couldn’t hear Dean anymore. 

“This will only hurt a little.”

Static crackle in her voice, Debussy in her ears and Sam swallowed, thick tongue and aching jaw around the gag that had been shoved into her mouth. A muffled plea, some sort of aborted sob and Sam pulled against the restraints. It jarred her shoulder, sent a spike of sharp pain through her chest and she cried out around the gag then, she nearly vomited then just from the feeling.

A clicking sound then, something foreign and strange and there was a lot hum in the air. 

And then her back bowed off the chair, contorting and seizing as best as it could as her nervous system tried to find distance between herself and the chair, the electric currents that came from the headband that had been locked around her skull. Lightning in her veins, tearing through her muscles and splitting her bones in half, she couldn’t feel the pain in her shoulder then for how her entire body felt like it was going to burn into a thousand pieces. A livewire had replaced her lungs and her heart could barely keep up, violent seizing as her body tried to deal with the electricity, as she pissed herself from the currents.

Sam couldn’t hear herself screaming, blood curdling despite the muffle that the gag offered but the sound echoed throughout the basement all the same. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright so, it's been a bit. like, a fair while of a bit, but I can proudly say that I've finished this bit of this series at least! Have fun, feel free to review! Be prepared for spelling errors and typos

He was going to puke. 

If not from the fact that he could still smell burning, blistered flesh, could still taste sticky, oversweet fat and ash in his throat then from the way he could still see the terror on her face. Eyes blown a wide, terrified hazel and her tanned skin draining of all of its sun loved color, she had reached for him like she trusted him, like he could save her. And maybe he could have, maybe he could have reached her if he’d dropped his gun, maybe he could have gotten to her if he hadn’t wanted to check the next dark, crumbling room. 

But he could still see that lipless, eyeless face behind hers and he could still see that hand wrapping around her throat like it belonged there. The spirit had wrenched her back with such force that he’d been scared her neck would snap, but everything about that moment had scared him from the way her hands had flown out for him to the way her feet had come clean off the floor, the way the door to the stairwell had slammed shut behind her no matter how hard he pulled and shouted. 

He could still hear her screaming his name, ringing in his ears, Dean adjusted his grasp on his sawed off. 

He had had plans, things he had wanted to give to her, things he had wanted to do. A modest china print dress that would have swung around her knees, little soft brown flats that he had made sure didn’t have any sharp edges around the inside, Dean had planned to take her to dinner. Dean had planned to give her the kind of birthday she had wanted, had planned on making love to her like she’d asked over and over again for the last three years. 

So dark he almost couldn’t see, he pressed his back to the wall and took a slow, deep breath. Nothing smelled like death here, not like the burning kind of rot that had lingered in the air after Sam had been taken from him. Just the thick musk of a building that had begun to devour itself, and his head peeked around the corner before his gun swung after it. There wasn’t a single thing with him though, living or otherwise, no gusting hint of his own breath where it had chilled over and no eerie, electrified feeling that skittered across his skin. No John with his wide shoulders and his talent of seeming to always have the answer, no Sam with her honey hazel eyes and her quick little grin. 

There was nothing, not a single damn thing, and Dean always forgot just how much he hated being alone until he was. 

“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Until he could hear his own heart beating in his ears, until he could hear nothing but his own thoughts. Not good enough, not fast enough, not strong enough, John left him behind with his own injuries and his hands tacky with blood. Not enough, not enough, Sam with her bones that had begun to threaten to stretch and her eyes that drifted like she wanted to run as fast and far as she could. 

A faint bounce at his knees to force him back to his full height as he rounded the corner and Dean moved on silent feet. 

Nearly an hour since he’d lost her, since she’d been pulled from him screaming his name. He would remember that sound until the day he died, would know how wide her eyes had gone, the desperate claw of her hands when she’d pulled for him. The doors had shut tight behind her screaming like they’d never been open to begin with, hadn’t moved no matter how much he’d pounded his fists and shoulder against them and called out her name. 

The hallway was nothing if not looming, quiet and empty and oversized, but those stairs had been locked off tight. It had taken time to search the entire ward, any room could have been a stairwell, any door could have given him a chance to hear her, to find her. But every door was the entry to an empty room, a way into a sad, decrepit, dark space where he could barely see, where nothing moved and nothing breathed. 

_ “Fuck! _ ”

He had spent more time running in the last hour with his heart thundering than he had all week, but he moved now with purpose, silent feet that carried him swiftly over crumbling floor tiles and past hungry, desolate doorways. There were bars on the windows, furniture thrown about but it was so dark it felt like he couldn’t breathe.

With the way that Sam had been taken from him he couldn’t help but expect the worse. Places like this had to have a history, this many rooms and this much decay looked like a perfect recipe for pain. Thick and sour, it was like he could taste the leftover heavy of it in his throat, places this breed of dark and ugly turned into cesspools for spirits that couldn’t cross over, too much torture and hatred until it made things violent, made them hungry.

Twenty years old and he’d seen too many hunters dead because they underestimated what should have been a simple salt and burn. He refused to let Sam end up like that, she was too smart for that, she mattered too much for that. Damn himself and damn John, the world could turn to ash for all he cared, this life didn’t get to take Sam, not while he had anything to say about it.

But panic made him jittery, but his anger made him quick, set on fire from the inside with a consuming, demanding insistence that he wouldn’t find her, he wouldn’t save her. Gun in one hand and he shoved at every door that he passed, damn if he drew attention to himself, fuck it if something heard him. Maybe he could draw them out, maybe he could make enough of a scene that that spirit found him before he found it. 

Another door pushed open with his shoulder and his heart pulled tight in his throat at the sprawling darkness within, felt like it could crawl out from behind his teeth. 

Stairs though, he had found  _ stairs _ , a set leading up and a set leading down, thin and built like they were caged in and he could have cried. Instead, gun to his chest, he barreled down the set without a second thought, boots loud and his heart louder. Because the creature had pulled her down, had taken her to the floor below them but he had found a way down now. They were steep, rickety from age and they creaked under his weight, half rotted wood that threatened to give beneath him as he flew down them. Cotton thick darkness, he could barely see but he didn’t dare touch the banister, the walls, and instead Dean hurried down the sharp flight of stairs as it rounded, took the landing on two hurried steps before jogging down the second half. 

The cage like bannister slammed to a halt at the landing, left him with nothing but stifling darkness and clinging quiet. He charged full force into the double doors instead, dim beams of light cutting through the air and he wasn’t alone. Something had joined him just as quickly as he had thrown himself from the stairwell and he didn’t have time to stop, didn’t have time to swing his gun around and try to aim. 

“God damn i- _ Dean!” _

Chest to chest with John and their guns clattered together, their feet tangled and their knees knocked, John caught him by a fistful of his flannel. Kept him from slipping, kept him from falling, kept him close all while Dean found his balance and adjusted his grip on his sawed off. His heart hadn’t stopped throbbing though because this wasn’t the person he’d wanted, this wasn’t the person who needed him. 

This wasn’t  _ Sam. _

There must have been something in his expression, there must have been something wild and frantic in his eyes because John’s expression hardened. There were windows on this level, unbarred windows, this ward had been public in one way or another, this ward had been open access to more than just the heavily restrained patients. They were on the ground floor then, they were near the exit, they could get  _ out _ , but he had to find Sam before they could do anything. 

“Where’s your brother?”

He wanted to smack his sawed off against John’s teeth every time he said that.

Every single Goddamn time, that stupid word fell from his tongue and Dean couldn’t do or say a fucking thing. He to watch the way Sam’s eyes would shutter, had to watch the way her mouth would go thin around the edges. Her shoulders straighter, her spine steely, his little sister closed off and shut down every time John said that sort of shit until she was blank faced, until she was dead eyed. Until Dean could hardly recognize her anymore and he hated it. 

“Dean, where the hell is yo-”

“One of them got Sam.”

John had a harsh fistful grab on his shirt and he couldn’t put any distance between them. Not like he wanted, nothing substantial enough for it to feel like the space between that he’d been hoping for. Dean was stuck, caught further still by the way that their Dad reeled him in by that handhold and clanked their guns together once more. 

“What do you fucking me-”

“It’s not like I wanted it to ha-”

A nearly violent shake, forceful and angry and hard enough that his teeth clattered together. Like it was either John shake him around or he’d hit him, and Dean would take this for all that he already felt nauseous since before the stairs. That demanding grip though and John snapped him back against the closed stairwell door, nearly made him lose his footing, nearly made him lose his gun. Even in the dark that surrounded them, John’s face was pale, maybe from panic, maybe from rage, some mix of both that Dean couldn’t see enough of to understand.

“You had one fucking job, Dean.  _ One.” _

Panic was such a familiar feeling at this point that the dose of rage that slithered through his lungs was nearly all he noticed. Because how fucking dare he, what right did John have to say that sort of shit, to accuse him like that. He knew what his fucking job had been, but Sam wasn’t just some job, Sam wasn’t just some chore.

Sam was everything.

“Fuck yo-”

A booming scream in the dark, far off to their left and wild, angry. A caged animal kind of furious yowling, terror and desperation and rage that he could taste on his tongue. But he knew that voice and he knew the tone of that anger, and John’s fisthold on his shirt meant nothing then. Dean wrenched himself away with popping seams and his weight thrown full body from the door like he’d been laced with a livewire.

_ “Sam!” _

Boots behind him, John ran after him with a curse on his breath. But Dean didn’t care, Dean didn’t stop, not when a door clattered loudly somewhere up ahead and his sister screamed in the dark. Because he could see his breath now, puffs of it from between his lips where the air had gone cold and the doors around them started to rattle in their frames. 

And that was her, there, he could make her out just barely across the wide of the lobby and half way down another hall, trying to press her back to a door only to scream as it burst open from behind her.

He didn’t know which was worse, Sam being so far away and terrified, or realizing that the shadows had never really been shadows at all. 

They came alive now, became writhing shapes with arms and legs, with faceless heads and they cried from in the darkened recesses of the rooms. Like they’d died there, like they’d been trapped there since their bodies had rotten one way or another and the front doors had closed up tight. He didn’t even know where they were, hadn’t had the time with how John had pulled them in and set them running half cocked, but the air carried nothing but the last mourning breaths of the dead. 

The sound was thunderous then, slamming from the door that hadn’t managed to open and violent, flickering flashes of light for all that the building had no power, he wanted to cry as he watched the spirit catch up to her again even as he sprinted across what remained of the once lavish lobby. Watched it grab her and pull her and force her against its chest like it wanted in hers, he hadn’t thought he could run any faster.

_ “You know what happens to liars!” _

_ “Fuck you!” _

Like she didn’t care, like she wasn’t afraid, but he was, so scared enough for the both of them that Dean could barely breathe. She swung hard though, she’d found iron somewhere, had gotten crafty and resourceful and pulled a bar clean off the windows and she used it like a weapon now on a wild cut. 

The spirit gone and she stumbled then, tried to run, tried to get away and Dean watched instead as those billowing spectral shadows spilled from within their rooms out into the hall.

“Sam!”

He never wanted to step foot in another hospital of any sort, he never wanted to let her leave his side, the air reeked of sickly sweet decay and cut across his skin like lightning. And he screamed, cried out her name just to try and get her to run to him, they could get out if she would just fucking turn and see him. Because he wasn't going to make it, he knew he wasn't and he would have fired a shot if he hadn't been so scared of hitting her. There would be no reaching her in time though, not with the large, smoking figure that curled over top of her, not with how she herself screamed and threw herself away from its reaching hands to a door that she disappeared through.

“Fuck!”

Just in time to see the door click shut, to see the simple sign that read stairs, to listen to the door  _ lock _ .

He couldn't tell if the puffs of his breath came from the spirits all around him or the one that had latched onto his baby, but the door was cold and ice slick to the touch. Impossible to open no matter how he pushed, but he could hear music, music that he knew from how his fingers had always liked the soothing sounds he could pull from a piano keys if just given the chance. The same one that he had hummed the notes for to Sam when her wild, sharp brain just wouldn't let her sleep but there was something wrong with it, something broken, but those were Sam's feet almost out of view through the doorway.

He could hear her screaming through the door and he rattled it, shoved his weight against it just to try and get it to open. Watched as she tumbled backwards down the half rotten stairs, where was her pack, where was her gun? Her hand caught the rail, jerked her weight and he would be picking splinters out of her hand for hours but he would take it if the damn door just opened.

She almost pressed herself face first to the glass, and there was something so desperate and scared in her face that he wanted to cry all over again.

“Sam!”

“Dean, Dean, I can't get it-Dean it's locked, Dean, the-she locked the door, Dean!”

The spirit had no eyes. A woman, burned from the inside where her skin had split open and turned sticky and pale, where her fat had all boiled and melted through. Bloody, weeping holes where there should have been eyes, a grotesque display of teeth where she should have had lips, he never got used to this sort of thing. He never got used to this sort of thing, he never wanted to be this close to this, he had never wanted Sam to be in danger like this, not Sam, never Sam.

They should have just stayed back at the motel, they should have just run the other way the moment John came calling.

“ _ Dean!” _

“No visitors!”

He could see her gripping the door like it was the only thing keeping her alive, but he watched for a second time as the spirit curled those gnarled, graveyard fingers around her throat like they belonged there. And its voice was grating, static shock biting against his skin and lightning ozone cling within his bones, his lungs, his screaming was furious even as John caught up and tried to help, threw his larger weight against the sealed door to no avail.

“Get your fucking hands off o-Sammy!  _ Sam!” _

He never wanted to see her head snap back like that again, he could hear the crack of her shoulder as she was wrenched full body from the door, as the ball pulled free from the socket and her arm went limp. The sound she made was inhuman, pained and terrified and pleading but it was like the door had frozen over no matter how hard he and John shoved against it.

The thing yanked her backwards like that, down the stairs toward the basement and he watched her head roll, watched her boot clad feet try and fail to find their footing.

“ _ Sam!” _

She disappeared from view within a blink, but his rage kept him screaming, shoulder against the door before John took him by the other. He nearly cocked his gun beneath his fathers throat even as John shoved his back against the door, made him look at the space around them. And there were spirits there still, dozens, hundreds, pale shapes having flooded the hallway around them and they drifted from the shadows until all the darkness that hung in the air clung to their smokey forms instead.

He didn't have time for this and Dean cocked his gun then, because he couldn't hear Sam screaming, he couldn't hear her anymore.

None of them flickered for all that none of them lunged for the two remaining Winchesters, and he watched from the corner of his eye as John's fingers flexed against his own gun. The largest of the spirits stood closest to them, the one that had loomed behind Sam before she had ducked into the stairs, and it watched them both with empty spaces where it should have had eyes. It's body moved then, far more fluid that the flickering, broken record motions that the spirit that had taken Sam moved with but Dean had to fight not to flinch all the same.

It pointed in the direction they had come though, large arm lifted toward the doors, and the other spirits parted the way for them, gave a path out into the lobby and to the right.

“Are you  _ helping _ us?”

“ _ Dean!” _

John hissed his name from where they were pressed shoulder to shoulder, and the spirit just stared at him. But its mouth unsealed, but slow curls of frost spilled from between its dead lips as it spoke, and he wanted to press back further against the door that wouldn't open. Body aching and cold like North Dakota ice crystals skated across his bones, like a snow storm swirling in his lungs, terror tasted bitter, made more jagged by the rage he'd grown familiar with.

“Nobody else needs to die at Meredith's hands.”

He didn't wait for John.

Dean took off at a sprint, booted feet loud on the crumbling floor and his gun clutched tight. The shadowy spirits parted like a sea though, guided his path from the dead end ward back to the lobby, to the right down a wide, dark hall. This had been the main drag once, the furniture here would have been opulent had it not been in such a state of disarray, had the walls not peeled in curling sheets and the lights hung by nothing more than their wires. A door not two feet in front of him burst open on a wide swing, a simple sign said stairs and he tossed himself across the threshold and into the darkness.

He could hear John call his name from somewhere behind him but he didn't stop, but he didn't care.

The dark had always scared him, seeking shadow fingers and too many things that lurked just out of sight, he knew the sort of monsters that lived and breathed just out of reach. A werewolf with a want to cut out his little sisters heart, a vampire that wanted to eat out his throat, ghouls that wanted to chew on their bones and spirits that wanted to pull them limb form limb. He had seen too much, he knew too much, but some things were more important than his fears. Quick down the stairs instead, hurried steps without a single hand hold onto the banister or a touch to the wall and he could hear the wood groan, he could hear the metal creak.

Just above the second landing and a board snapped, his feet skidded across nothing and he flew forward, one hand keeping his gun tight to his chest while the other went out to catch himself. It was going to hurt, something was going to break, but a hand grabbed him by the back collar of his jacket and yanked him hard, forced him upright and to his feet before he could even hit. And his head spun, his lungs seizing from the movement, but his feet were on solid ground.

“Thanks Da-”

John rounded through the door that Dean himself had sprinted through, and he blinked up at John then, more than a bit stupid with the panic in his lungs. Because there was nobody behind him, there was nobody who could have grabbed him, who could have kept him from cracking open his face or breaking his neck. He could see his breath though, a winter cold haze puff of it, he could taste the frost on his tongue.

He didn't think he'd ever have to think about a spirit saving his life.

“Dean, go!”

He didn't need told twice, tossed himself down the remainder of the stairs and there was light in the hall down here. He could see it in streams from under the door, there was something down here, but the light didn’t mean a single thing. Because there was a pained animal screaming, high and blood curdling and it took longer than it should have to realize that sound was human, that that was  _ Sam _ .

The door opened easily and her screaming only got louder, pleading and agonized for all that it sounded muffled, quieted around the edges. Streams of light flickered wildly where the half hanging bulbs swung and rolled till they looked ready to fly from the ceiling. They rattled against the walls with a harsh bang but he didn’t stop, but he didn’t care, because that was Sam screaming, that was the whole world feeling like it had gone razor edged only to come down on his shoulders. 

He could hear the electricity before he even got to the room, he could feel it on his skin, hair standing on end and everything inside him screaming that he needed to run, he needed to hide. But she stopped screaming before he even got in the door, but the air smelled like urine and burning and Dean threw himself in anyway. 

He would have vomited on the floor if he’d had time to eat since that morning. 

Dark and crackled, what would have been blood at one point smeared across the crumbling walls but it smelled over sweet and thick in the room from shit let to fester, from rotting flesh never cleaned. The sharp amoena of urine that had puddled, but everything was secondary to the too long limbed figure standing over his little sister where she writhed. 

“Dean!”

Quick to follow orders even when they weren’t voiced fully, he could do that if nothing else and Dean dropped just in time for John to shoot a shell of rock salts into the spirits side. It screamed before it flickered out, radio static wavering and grating, but Sam’s fingers gripped the wooden arms of the chair she’d been bound with thick straps at her ankles, her wrists. Her body bowed from the chair where she hadn’t been held down and she shook violently, he could see the electricity crawling across her skin, but she’d stopped screaming. 

Sam had stopped screaming and he almost touched her electrified skin in his haste to get the rusted electrode band off of her head.  

The pump of a shotgun behind him came faster than his hands though, and from the corner of his vision he saw John fire at the control box near the far wall. The buzzing stopped instantly, the room went nearly quiet and he surged back to his feet then. Because it was like her strings had all been cut, flushed body slack against that stupid chair and his knife made quick work of the straps. Blood at her wrists and the gag that had been strapped around her head had cut into her lips, her cheeks, fresh red blood smeared across her skin. 

The skin where that head strap had touched her had blistered and burned, and the rest of her was hot to the touch, limp. Vomit on her face from where her body had puked form the pain, bubbles of dried bile and stomach acid across her cheeks and chin where it had seeped past the gag. Her head just rolled when he pulled her into his arms, her shoulder still out of the socket and he was scared to hurt her further, terrified to make it worse. Like he could break her worse than that ghost had, but there was a faint, distorted curl of music in the air, and his head came up as he held Sam tight to his chest, as John cocked his gun again. 

“Take your brother outside as fast as you can and don't look back! Now, Dean, go!”

There was something equal parts crazed and dead lurking in John’s eyes, but he didn’t care, didn’t want to know, and Dean got Sam as close as he could and ran. 

And he could see his breath and he could hear Debussy static broken and scratched record stuck, he could feel Arctic tundra fingers scraping across the back of his throat. Angry and greedy, so hungry it was like he could taste its ravenous breath, but he had something precious in his arms, but he ran for more than just his own life. Spectral screaming and another pump of that shotgun, Dean had just a second to get into the stairwell before the loud boom of a shot echoed through the basement, the spirit screeching. 

The door slammed shut behind them, stairwell locked up and swaying, veil pale and shadow leeching figures lurked there. They didn’t scare him now, not like the orderly did, not like Meredith did but he couldn’t look back, not with Sam limp against his chest. One of them matched him step for step on the stairs, one of them kept time with him like it wanted to, like it needed to. Empty sockets for eyes but it was a woman, long hair and a sad expression to her long dead face, but there was something warm and gentle, morning light soft in his chest despite the panic. 

Because she got them to the lobby and they swarmed there still, clogged up the space behind them as if to block Meredith, as if to give them time. 

And Dean could hear her screaming from somewhere in the building, a rage so sharp and demanding that it rattled what remained of the abandoned structure. John was in there somewhere, John had gotten left behind, but the whole damn building could come down on the man’s head for all he cared. It was her birthday, they should have been having dinner and ice cream while she smiled in a new, pretty dress, not running for their lives while she smelled of urine and vomit in his arms. 

Let the whole building fall to dust. 

Another sharp sound, music pulled through a grinder and he’d never hated a song so much, he had never before thought he could hate music. Dean hated it now though, the spirits around them swelled even as he scrambled to a stop, because her eye sockets bled freely and her lipless mouth was pulled into a wide, vicious snarl. On arm too long from where it had been dislocated and he thought of Sam, he hated to think just what she could have done to his baby if they hadn’t gotten there in time. 

_ “No visitors!” _

Shrill and booming and her screaming felt like it sucked the breath clean from his lungs, peeling at the delicate flesh until everything felt bloody and raw. She would have been slighter than he when she were alive if only in height, but she’d died violently, but she’d been cruel and it showed in the twisted remains she had become. He couldn’t find it in himself to feel sympathy though, not when Meredith stood now between them and the door, not with Sam limp in his arms while her head rolled like her neck had been snapped. 

Her skin was hot to the touch still, body just as burning as it was pliant against his chest, Dean couldn’t manage his gun like this. 

Sam was going to die like this and it was all his fucking fault. 

And then he couldn’t breathe, ice passing through him like a chill that felt like it wouldn’t end, the long haired spirit that had guided him up the stairs surged through him. Put herself between them and Meredith and God but she felt desperate, felt so sad he would have sobbed with it if he’d not felt like he could gag on his fear. Dean watched her throw herself at the twisted, broken record seizure that had ridden Meredith’s bones into her death. They crashed together with a burst of light, of glimmering, icy dust that would always be more than just dust and there were dozens of them then that threw themselves into the collision, that used what they had left and dragged her through the floor to the basement once more. 

Just for the moment, just for long enough, and Dean ran. 

The night sky had never looked so sweet. 

A spiraling, endless canvas of stars flickered above them, beautiful and infinite and kind. Just as watchful as they were quiet, gentle like nothing else in the last few had managed to be but he didn’t stop, couldn’t stop. The loving sweep of the night, and his own chest clenching fear for the things that lurked just beyond sight in the heavy black didn’t mean a single damn thing when Sam hadn’t moved since John had cut the power to the electrocution chair. 

Small mercies meant the car was still unlocked, meant the back passenger door didn’t stick when he jerked it open. He didn’t bump her head when he laid her down in back bench seat, she was still short enough that her legs fit without him having to bend them, and his own hands were shaking when he slammed the door shut. But they weren’t safe yet, he didn’t trust this darkness and he didn’t trust that looming building that he’d given his back, so Dean yanked open the drivers door once he’d rounded the car, tossed himself behind the wheel and stuffed the keys into the ignition.

Gravel flew, his foot on the gas and it was the momentum that snapped his door shut. The cab alive with a familiar, roaring sound from the engine while the impala sped off the property and Dean picked a street, picked a direction all with the radio and his cassettes on silent. He needed to hear her breathing, he needed to know she was alive, that she was there, and the streetlights on the edge of town flickered by as he propelled them out of the city limits. Onto the darkness of a winding road where the streetlights tapered off the faster he drove, where the world went quiet and everlasting and trees curled over the wind of the road. 

He didn’t know how long they drove like that, his knuckles white and his shoulders burning from how tense he’d held himself. But his gas gauge hadn’t moved, but his speed hadn’t wavered, but the panic pound of his heart had started to slow down to something that felt less like terror. And that should have been his first clue, nothing was ever simple after a hunt gone horribly wrong, and this surely planned on being the absolute worst he would see for a while. His stupid, hopeful heart should have known better.

There was sound from behind him, the swish catch of fingers on leather like she’d started to come awake. The road ahead was straight and empty, long with lines that had mostly lost their paint but they were alone like he’d wished they could have been all day. 

“Hey, baby girl, you wit-”

One booted foot kicked out against the door and it skated wildly across the panel, the window while her other leg fell into the footwell. Clattering, gurgling noises and the sounds were violent, desperate and muffled behind clenched teeth. A girl in one of his classes had been epileptic, had shook herself clean out of her desk across the room in class once and Dean slammed on the breaks, jerked them to the side of the road because he didn’t know what to do but he couldn’t just leave her. 

“Fuck, Sam!”

Feet on the pavement and he got the back door open just in time to catch sight of her eyes rolling, her arms pulled rigid to her chest with her fingers clawed. He caught her by her shoulders, dragged her full out of the seat and nearly got clipped in the nose with a fist even as the top of her head cracked on the underside of his jaw. Her shaking took his balance, dropped the two of them back into the grass but he kept Sam’s seizing body against his own. Bound her close with his arms and tried not to let her hurt herself even as her body kicked out and quaked against him. 

Her shaking stopped just as soon as it had started, her dirty body dead heavy limp against him. There would be bruises on his legs from her boots, he could feel where one of her hands had racked across his throat, but he could feel her breathing. A delicate, fine tremble still raced across her skin like it planned on never stopping, and he pulled his arms tighter around her, one hand in her hair. 

There were too many trees, he couldn’t see the stars that he could have sworn were in the sky more than an hour ago. 

It had been building for hours, but Dean pressed his mouth to the top of her head to try and stifle his own sobbing while the sky broke open somewhere far overhead. His heart felt like it wanted to give out, he couldn’t seem to stop his crying, but he held his little sister against him in the wet grass somewhere in West Virginia. She smelled like burning, still just as hot and limp as she had been when he had carried her to the only home they had ever known and he didn’t know how to make any of this better. He couldn’t fix this, he couldn’t take the shakes from her bones, he couldn’t even get her in a shower when they were this far out in the middle of nowhere. 

All he’d wanted was to take her out so she could spend a night laughing. 

“D-De?”

Thin and wavering, broken from the bruises that he knew ringed her throat, he couldn’t tell which one of them shook more, he couldn’t tell if she’d started crying or if the rain hard just started to come down on them that heavily. He didn’t know the answer and he didn’t care, because her poor, elegant little hands curls weakly against his jacket like that was all she needed. 

“Yeah baby, De’s here, I’m here.”

Her hands slipped under his jacket, and surely her skin must have been tender, but Dean wrapped as much of the leather around her as he could and held her close against his chest. If she knew that he hadn’t stopped crying then she didn’t call him on it, and Dean wouldn’t have cared even if she had. He’d thought he’d lost her, he’d thought that stupid, ungodly electric chair had taken her from him to somewhere he couldn’t follow, and Dean never wanted to think about Sam hurt like that, about Sam dying. 

So they lay there in the late night rain on some back road in the West Virginia woods while the impala kept silent watch, and Dean knew that nothing would ever be the same. 


End file.
